Thus, as educators, we must proactively develop learning opportunities
for students to build skills they need
to solve problems in their personal and
social lives—problems that may be far
more weighty than challenges faced in
math or English language arts.

Solving Broader Social Problems

School is also an important space
for students to develop the ability
to identify and solve wider social
problems. Educators should develop
opportunities for students to build
knowledge and problem-solving skills
that propel them to transform not
only their own lived experiences, but
also the experiences of their local and
broader communities. Educators who
are serious about helping students
build problem solving skills with real-life implications should consider the
following strategies.

Model exemplary problem-solving
practices. When conflicts emerge
within a school, or even in the community around the school, teachers
should exhibit with and for students
behaviors that help students understand how to work through those
conflicts. For instance, if a teacher is
having a conflict with a student in the
classroom and the student gets upset
and starts yelling at the teacher, rather
than immediately resorting to sending
the student out of the classroom, the
teacher has an excellent opportunity
to talk through the conflict. By posing
questions and listening to the student,
the teacher can demonstrate how to
use social cues to work through a
challenge to de-escalate it. Moreover,
educators should introduce students
to exemplary community members
(in person, where possible) such as
activists who work to address, fight
against, and solve injustice as it
manifests in real life.

Help students identify complex socialproblems and gather information. Weshould give students opportunitiesto identify problems in their localcommunity—or even their state—sostudents can critique those issuesand find possible solutions. Studentsalso need guidance and opportunitiesto collect information from a rangeof sources in order to understandthe complexity and nuance of socialissues. This information gatheringshould focus not only on problems,but also on established solutions toproblems, which may be transferableto other instances.

To illuminate, Haberman (1991)
stressed that students should be
challenged with understanding and
solving questions like why some
people are rich and others poor.

Teachers might begin exploring such
dilemmas with learners by using an
analytic anchor like data on poverty.

For instance, the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services has
a chart available showing its 2016
guidelines for families living below
or above the poverty line. Looking
over the chart and realizing that, for
example, a single person earning

$12,000 a year, or a family of three
earning $21,000 aren’t considered to
be impoverished might be a catalyst
for exploring nuances of poverty in
the United States. Further, exploring
the federal guidelines for poverty can
help students think about families in
their local communities. What are the
reasons people live below the poverty
line—and the potential consequences?

What happens when people don’t
have access to decent-paying jobs and
health care, for instance?

Draw out student voices. Totransform how students look atproblems and their abilities to solvethem, encourage them to offer sug-gestions about how an issue can beaddressed or solved, rather than tellingthem a solution. Creating a classroomethos of shared communication canhelp students think through layers ofsocietal challenges they identify.Encourage ongoing problem solving.Encourage students to continue iden-tifying social problems and tacklingthem as an ongoing aspect of theirdeveloping knowledge, understanding,and disposition. In other words, asteachers use society as an analytic textthat students can examine, they shouldurge students to continue workingtowards social justice. In this way,students are developing skills that helpthem and others live in the world.Educators must be conscious ofshifting cultural landscapes aroundstudents. We have a powerfulopportunity to use society and itscomplex challenges as analytic spacesthat shepherd students into moredeeply understanding how the worldworks (and for whom) and also waysfor them to improve the humancondition. EL

References

American Society for the Positive Care ofChildren. (nd). Retrieved from ASPCCat http://americanspcc.org/bullying/statistics-and-informationEdudemic. (2014, July 28). How teens arereally using social media [infographic].Retrieved from Edudemic at www.edudemic.com/teens-are-really-using-social-mediaFreire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of the oppressed.New York: Continuum.

( Rmilner@pitt.edu) is the
Helen Faison Professor of
Urban Education and the
director of the Center for
Urban Education at the
University of Pittsburgh.

He is the author of Rac(e)ing to Class:
Confronting Poverty and Race in Schools
and Classrooms (2015), and the award-winning Start Where You Are But Don’t
Stay There: Understanding Diversity,
Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in
Today’s Classrooms (2010), both from
Harvard Education Press.